Turbo, Arcade

Sega‘s 1981 arcade racer, Turbo, was designed and programmed by Steve Hanawa and was manufactured in three formats: a standard, full-sized upright cabinet, a mini cabinet, and a deluxe, seated cockpit cabinet. All three versions had a steering wheel, a gear lever with high and low gears, and an accelerator pedal.

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Super Asteroids & Missile Command, Atari Lynx

Super Asteroids & Missile Command are a pair of conversions of two classic Atari arcade games – Asteroids and Missile Command – squeezed onto one cartridge and released for the Atari Lynx in 1995. These two games were apparently the very last to be released for the Atari Lynx.

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Heartland, ZX Spectrum

Heartland is a platform action game developed and published by Odin Computer Graphics for the 48K ZX Spectrum in 1986. It features gameplay that is similar to previous Odin games, Nodes of Yesod and Arc of Yesod, with a well-animated protagonist exploring a maze-like platform world of doors and elevators.

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Haunted Castle, Arcade

Haunted Castle is an obscure Castlevania arcade game, developed by Konami and first released in 1988. Until recently, I’d never seen it before, and playing it now I have to say that it is pretty unsophisticated for a late Eighties arcade game, and it pales into insignificance compared to other Castlevania games, like Super Castlevania IV or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It’s also insanely difficult. Maybe unfairly so.

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Unreal II: The Awakening, PC

Unreal II: The Awakening is the sequel to Unreal and was developed by Legend Entertainment and published by Infogrames in 2003 under the Atari brand. It utilises Unreal Engine 2 and again features a single-player campaign, as well as multiplayer deathmatching.

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Unreal Tournament, PC

Unreal Tournament is a famous, futuristic first-person shooter, developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes and first published by GT Interactive in 1999. The game is powered by the first version of the Unreal Engine (which was created for Unreal) and it helped popularise arena-based, multiplayer deathmatching, alongside competitors such as Quake II and Quake III Arena.

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Unreal, PC

Unreal is a pioneering first-person shooter developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes and first published by GT Interactive in 1998. It is the very first game in the Unreal series and was the first game to use the Unreal Engine, which was a ground-breaking 3D game engine at the time. Of course most gamers know about the Unreal Engine, and how it continues to innovate now, but this game is where Unreal first started.

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Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon, Atari ST

The 1988 Atari ST conversion of Cinemaware‘s Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon has considerably better graphics than the Amiga original, even though the ST can’t quite display as many colours on-screen as the Amiga can.

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Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon, Amiga

I don’t know why, but the Amiga version of Cinemaware‘s classic Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon looks absolutely terrible. The graphics are appalling and the presentation overall is very rough around the edges. Compare it to the Commodore 64 version and it’s easy to see the disparity.

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Rod Land, Arcade

Rod Land is a one or simultaneous two-player platform game created by Jaleco and first distributed into arcades in 1990. In it you control one of two fairies – Tam or Rit – each armed with a magic wand (or a ‘rod’, as the game’s title implies) which can immobilise monsters that chase you on each stage. The aim of the game is to rescue your ‘mom’ (and later, your dad) who has been kidnapped and taken to the top of a large tower.

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